PRACTICAL AND SMART ADVICE TO DEAL WITH PAIN

As above, so below

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is a quote that appears for the first time in the EMERALD TABLE.

The Emerald Table gives its author as Hermes Trismegistus and it rapresents a piece of “The Hermetica” (the text forms the base of Hermeticism discussing about nature, mind, divine and cosmos).

The text of the EMERALD TABLE, translated into latin by Isaac Newton is composed by 14 statements.

Here you can find the statement we are going to discuss about

“What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above. To make the miracle of the one thing.”

ABOVE and BELOW. The Macrocosm and the Microcosm that refer to a vision of cosmo.

It is not referred to a vision of Cosmos only but it is even referred to a vision of Life.

I am going to explain it better.

As above so below means that you are the one who you think you are.

Above means mind, below means body…

But I am going to tell you even more: “above” means your own reality, THE ONE YOU ARE LIVING IN YOUR MIND, while “below” means the reality of the facts. The one in which you are EFFECTIVELY living.

I will make an example: a girl suffering from anorexia is worried and concern about her bodyweight. She sees herself in the mirror fat and awful.

She can even have a palpatory illusion touching herself: she will feel a soft and chubby body rather than a skinny one. The reality of the facts is that her weight is 30kg.

Trust me: no way to convince her of the fact that she is not fat. You can use all your logic and rational tricks but she will never trust you. The reality that she is living inside herself is much stronger of the “real one”. This is an extreme example but not far away from what happens to people that have not been diagnosed with mental diseases.

Considering that we can discuss about it for hours, without finding a certain and objective explanation, the meaning I like to give to this quote is that our mind is the creator of our own reality.

It has been already proved that we cannot separate our mind from our body. They are not two separate entities, they don’t influence each other: THEY ARE THE SAME THING.

If you are a medical professional you CANNOT treat the body without taking care of the mind. Working as a physiotherapist I often see during the day cases of people having excruciating pain even if all the exams and all the test I do are negative. There is not massive tension in the soft tissues and the mobility of the spine is good.

Despite of all these things they are in a lot of pain. Their own reality is pain, sufferance and tears that take over the “real reality” in which their body is and in which almost everything is ok.

It is certainly true to say that a life of pain enhanced our belief that life is pain and sufferance. This process works in both the directions, even if the STARTING POINT, the primum movens, is our mind that filters and processes the reality.

At this stage we can consider two different realities: the real one (the reality of the facts in which we are living) and our own one (the reality created by our own mind).

The first reality is apparently the most important one: the place in which we live, the people who love us, the people who surround us, our job, our car, phone etc…. We can call it the “objective reality” deprived of any filters. The reality of the facts is 1+1=2

The second reality is our own one and it is the result of the real reality filtered by our own mind according to our experiences (it is becoming a delirium!). It is apparently a “subjective reality” because it is our own one and it is not shared by anyone else. The subjective reality is 1+1=3. But it is also 1+1=4 or 5 etc..

Now you may think that there is a border between these two realities and that the most important one is the reality of the facts.

However, the purpose of this delirium is to show that the “main reality” is our own one: the reality processed and created by our mind.

Think about this: it is not what happen to you (real reality) that make you miserable, desperate or joyful but IT IS HOW YOU PROCESS (your own reality) THE EVENTS THAT HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE. It is the meaning and the importance that you give to people, objects, events that determines the amount of pain and joy in your life.

In “Letters to Lucilius” Seneca wrote:

“We are tormented either by things present, or by things to come, or by both.”

“There are more thing, Lucilius,that frighten us rather than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality”

It is our own reality that reflects on the “real one” conditioning the quality of our life. IF we think we are miserable we will be miserable. If we think that we are sick we will be sick.

If we think that our condition is unchangeable it will be almost impossible to change it.

If we think that our chronic pain will never disappear, because we are doomed to sufferance, we will always be in pain.

And so on..

Our own reality becomes the most important one. It becomes objective and irrefutable.